How God transformed our hearts for His Kingdom in Africa through the adoption of our children.

Why Are We Ghana Go to Ghana?

We have had a whirlwind of a week — I attended a week of training on Community Health Evangelism, then scurried off to Nashville for the Alive Wesleyan Women’s conference, attended a funeral of my former boss, had the chance to share at our former home church in Hermitage, and talk to hundreds of friends in between.

I’ve realized that for some of you who are jumping into our story at this point, you may have missed a few a few details about what God has called us to. So for those of you jumping in at this point, WELCOME!

Here’s what God has asked of us:

We’re moving to Tamale, Ghana, hopefully in mid-2016 to be missionaries for a three year term.

I will be focusing on the Northern Ghana region, developing a program called Community Health Evangelism (CHE). CHE focuses on creating sustainable development programs in developing areas. The community itself identifies its needs, and I will train trainers to help the community solve problems like: poor soil, lack of economic opportunities, infant mortality, malnutrition, illiteracy, and preventable diseases. We focus on solutions that can be found in the local community rather than creating dependency on Western resources. Scriptural principles are appropriately incorporated into the curriculum. (For example, when we look at ways to improve soil, we will talk about the parable of the sower and having “good soil” in our hearts.) Because the community chooses the development projects, the leaders, and the workers, the community quickly achieves sustainability.

Ken will be working with pastors in Northern Ghana and in regions of French speaking Africa, where the Gospel is expanding exponentially, and church infrastructure is needed. There is also a need for pastors to be raised up and trained by a French-fluent church leader, which will be Ken. Ken hopes to facilitate the empowerment of Haitian nationals to become missionaries in French-speaking Africa, which is a new focus of Global Partners: sending missionaries from one mission field to another.

Addie and Palmer will be attending an international school started by Wycliffe translators, and will be educated in four different languages to help them become effective linguists. We are all excited about this, given the experiences God has already allowed in their lives. They are also very interested in helping other children from becoming orphans by helping to provide medical care alongside me. Addie and Palmer know in their hearts that God has called them back to Africa to bring Jesus’ love and healing.

We hope to leave for language school (either in Canada or in Ivory Coast) in January 2016, but we have to reach full funding before we leave. Because we will be the first Global partners missionaries in Northern Ghana, we have to raise operating expenses in addition to start-up expenses. We have a tall task, but the work of God in Northern Ghana and Western Africa is a tremendous financial opportunity for investment. To achieve our financial goals, we need 70 partners who are willing to contribute $100/month for the next four years. We also need 400 prayer partners who are committed to praying for us at least once per week for the next four years.

We know that God not only calls us, but we know that He has called people across the United States and Canada to Partner with us as well. We’d love for you to pray about what role God might want you to play in what God is doing in Ghana. If you feel that God is calling you to be a part of what He wants to do in Northern Ghana and French-speaking Africa, click here!